Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Matthew Bryant is secretary of GFW Writers group and also is our in-house professor of the new Grammar Etiquette blogseries,
posted the second Wednesday of every month. He is an English teacher in
Denton, TX. When he isn't teaching he is ghost writing and working on
his novel. He says with small children he has learned to write fast.

If you have a question or a comment, please leave it in the comment section at the end of this article.

One of the easiest mistakes to make,
then later to overlook, is the misuse of apostrophes. While a bit
obnoxious, this is perfectly understandable, so there's no real sense
in beating yourself up over it. As an English teacher, it's the
third most common error, just tailing behind commas and homonyms. So
let's have a quick refresher in the appropriate times to use one,
shall we?

Contractions

Ladies, calm down, I'm not talking
about labor here. Contractions also represent the combination of two
words. Down south, one of our favorites is “y'all”, a clever
slang of 'you' and 'all'. And yes, it's spelled “y'all”, not
“ya'll” for you wannabe southerners.

In each of these, the apostrophe
appears where the words are split and then rejoined. Think of them
as the duct tape of the literary world. The reason I used this
demonstration first, is for a few select words: it's and there's.
While these could easily fall into the category of possessives, it
would be incorrect. It's and there's represent “it is” and
“there is” respectively. Such as “It's a nice day out today”
and “There's poo in the litter box.” And for the record, those
self-cleaning litter boxes don't really do you any favors, it just
collects all of the foulness into an inconvenient plastic box that
leaks half the litter out onto the floor beneath the box anyway.

The best way to keep a litter box clean
is to throw out the cat.

Possessives

I like having things. Anything I can
dub as 'mine' is an automatic win in my humble opinion. Even if the
statement is, “Matthew's car is a piece of crap.” This may be
true, but it's MY car and I'm damned proud of it. In these
situations, the apostrophe follows the noun that holds ownership and
is typically succeeded by an 's'. Rare instances are those shown
above involving 'its' and 'theres'. While spell-check will tell you
that 'theres' doesn't exist, it's just being stupid. Disregard.

Other instances of difference are
following plural nouns - “It's the ducks' favorite watering hole.”
In these cases, the apostrophe actually signifies the end of the
word.

More obnoxious are the nouns that end
in 's'. For instance: Princess. In order to make princess plural,
you must attach an apostrophe and another 's'. Spoken aloud, this
sounds like 'Princesses', although there is no additional 'e' added.

Pseudo-Quotes

I might've just made that word up.
Regardless of my God-like abilities to create language, this happens
to fit these phenomena perfectly. Pseudo-quotes are words, letters,
or phrases embedded into a sentence, statement, or thought without
actually being a direct quote. I love these because they don't
require a comma, although some may call for 'finger quotes' when
spoken publicly.

Armed with this knowledge, you can
safely avoid the apostrophe atrocity that has befallen far too many
self-published authors who excitedly hand me their manuscript and
'graciously' receive their backhand of peer-editing.